Solder iron tip not heating up, advice needed

[Lionel Lemarie]

Hi,

I've had a nice Weller WS81 solder iron for a while, that I haven't
to get working properly. I have a bunch of Weller tips for it, none of
them heat up properly at the very end, which makes soldering quite
hard. The side of the tip is hot (~1 mm off the point) and can be
used, with some difficulty, to solder; but the very end
does not melt the solder. I've tried tinning, cleaning, sanding the
tip, nothing helped. I'm not certain what temperature I should run it
at, but I've tried various
settings without improvement. I have other cheap irons which work as expected.

Any ideas on how to get this one to work properly?

Thanks,
Hikey.

[Adrian Godwin]

About 350 C should be fine for leaded solder. Unleaded is a bit higher but I don't use it much. If it's not melting at that temperature it's probably indicating wrong.

-adrian

[Hikey]

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for that, I'm fairly sure I'm using lead-free solder (although it's not clearly indicated, how do I check for sure?). I tried cranking it to 450C (the max available) and it's noticeably better.

Is it reasonable to use it at 450? Or am I likely to fry my board... I've tried on spares and it seemed ok, but I'd appreciate some experienced confirmation.

Thanks!
Hikey.

[Russ Garrett]

On 12 August 2010 20:16, Hikey <hack...@hikey.org> wrote:
> Thanks for that, I'm fairly sure I'm using lead-free solder (although it's
> not clearly indicated, how do I check for sure?). I tried cranking it to
> 450C (the max available) and it's noticeably better.

Lead-free solders are generally workable at 400 degrees. Anything more
than that generally indicates that your iron is calibrated wrong.

--
Russ Garrett
ru...@garrett.co.uk

[Lionel Lemarie]

Thanks Russ, I'll experiment with that with more confidence.

--
Lionel Lemarié
http://www.hikey.org